Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War eBook

THE JUDICIAL ASPECTS OF THE SEIZURES.

In the discussion which occurred during the detention,
and which was continued after the release of the three
German ships, the assertions made by the British and
German Governments brought out the fact that English
practice is often opposed to Continental opinion in
questions of international law.

On the fourth of January the German Ambassador in
London had declared that his Government, “after
carefully examining the matter” of the seizure
of the Bundesrath, and considering the judicial
aspects of the case, was “of the opinion that
proceedings before a Prize Court were not justified."[22]
This view of the case, he declared, was based on the
consideration that “proceedings before a Prize
Court are only justified where the presence of contraband
of war is proved, and that, whatever may have been
on board the Bundesrath, there could have been
no contraband of war, since, according to recognized
principles of international law, there cannot be contraband
of war in trade between neutral ports.”

He asserted that this view was taken by the English
Government in the case of the Springbok in
1863 as opposed to the decision of the Supreme Court
of the United States sitting as a prize court on an
appeal from the lower district court of the State
of New York.[23] The protest of the British Government
against the decision of the United States court as
contravening these recognized principles, he said,
was put on record in the Manual of Naval Prize Law
published by the English Admiralty in 1866, three
years after the original protest. The passage
cited from the manual read: “A vessel’s
destination should be considered neutral, if both
the port to which she is bound and every intermediate
port at which she is to call in the course of her voyage
be neutral,” and “the destination of the
vessel is conclusive as to the destination of the
goods on board.” In view of this declaration
on the part of Great Britain toward neutral commerce
Count Hatzfeldt contended that his Government was
“fully justified in claiming the release of the
Bundesrath without investigation by a Prize
Court, and that all the more because, since the ship
is a mail-steamer with a fixed itinerary, she could
not discharge her cargo at any other port than the
neutral port of destination."[24]

[Footnote 23: This case, it will be remembered,
was not decided on the ground of the contraband
character of the goods in the cargo but because of
the presumption that the ultimate intention of the
ship was to break the blockade established over the
Southern States. This well founded suspicion,
based upon the character of the cargo as tending to
show that it could be intended only for the forces
of the Southern Confederacy, led to the conclusion